Ironside Delivers Ironworks 2.3
With the latest release of its Ironworks e-business engine, Ironside Technologies Inc. (Pleasanton, Calif.) delivers to its customers an enhanced graphical interface to go along with the product's multiple host gateway capability.
Prior to Release 2.3 of Ironworks, the product featured a single entry point to a host's business system, according to Derek Smyth, senior VP of sales and marketing for Ironside Technologies. "Now we can have multiple entry points to that host system, so you can build redundancy into the interface.
"We have customers with 10, 000 to 15, 000 users on a single system, and neither we nor they were comfortable relying on one gateway," Smyth adds. "The redundancy is there to keep performance up to the company's required levels."
Ironside positions its technology based upon five key features it considers to be requirements for a credible e-commerce solution: scalability, seamless integration to host environments, security, self-evidence (or ease of use) and speed.
"One of these we've really enhanced with Ironworks 2.3 is scalability," Smyth says. Thanks to the new multiple host gateway capabilities, users can load balance across gateways into their hosts. Customers can then have redundancy built in, so if one of the gateways goes down another will pick it up automatically.
"We’ve always integrated to unique host environments with one gateway," Smyth points out. "What multiple host gateways give us is the ability to duplicate an existing gateway and build that redundancy and load-balancing into your solution."
Release 2.3 also contains detailed documentation of Ironworks' integration with IBM's Net.Commerce, which debuted on the Ironworks product with Version 2.1. This enhanced documentation addresses the integration of Ironworks with the DB2 database and other entry points into Net.Commerce, as well as Net.Commerce's entry points into Ironworks.
Ironside has also enhanced the "look and feel capabilities" of Ironworks with this latest release, according to Smyth. "We've really been focused on bringing out a very fast, highly integrated application to the mid-tier manufacturing and distribution market," he says. "[Release] 2.3 gives Ironside customers the ability to be extremely flexible with the way the product looks and feels. The product really reflects the flow of information presentation."
Ironworks 2.3 has been available as a free upgrade to Ironworks NT users since early April, with the AS/400 version of the release scheduled for arrival in May.